My criteria for quitting a warzone--judge if you'd like; I've only quit a few:

1) Are we in the first 2 minutes? If I've spent more time than that, I ought to have done something meaningful by now. I'm not quitting a WZ that I'm trying to win.

2) Are we morons? I love force-sprinting to a pylon, capping, turning around, and seeing 6 teammates there, supporting my effort. Or solo-capping snow while watching grass get stealth capped right under the noses of the 2 people "guarding it." Or defending solo vs 7 incoming on a door in Voidstar. Can you all really not see the hoard of red names going left?

3) Do I have 1 or fewer medals? Sorry--selfish here. Rewards @ 3 medals. So if the whole team refuses to do anything other than 7-man guard grass on Alderaan for the match, I guess you all don't really need me.

If *all 3* conditions are true: 1 minute in, blatant stubborn moronism and refusal to try, and I cannot even get any credit... I quit. Happens occasionally.

And is *definitely* not the same as the %^#$^%$s who quit after losing one objective. Try, people. Just try--that's all I'm looking for in a WZ.

Not to be a DICK, wait who am I kidding. I don't think about them I think of me. I like me. I like me not staying in warzones with people who don't want to win so they don't do the simple things. And when it happens to me and I backfill a losing match I quit that match also. I mean the person who quit had a good reason so why would I want to stay. Everynow and then I will stay in a backfill match if I only need 1 more for my daily and Im running out of me time.

 

Jenna'syyde

Not necessarily. I've been in quite a few WZ's with people who've left when we were WINNING. People leave because they feel like it, I don't think I've ever seen someone leave for good reasons. I haven't left a WZ since I've been playing this game and I've been on the bad end of MANY, and I mean many pre mades and just overall better opponents. ****** teammates are something that's unfortunately apart of every community it seems.

In the worst assessment, that means we would have equal positive and negative utility. The leaver saved himself from 10 minutes of frustration, but at the cost of 10 other players wasting 1 minute each.

 

1 player * 10 minutes of annoyance = 10 units of annoyance

10 players * 1 minute of annoyance = 10 units of annoyance

 

But we still might be able to get a positive utility calculation! This depends on how annoyed/frustrated the first leaver would have been by staying those 10 extra minutes, and how annoyed/frustrated each subsequent newcomer is by wasting their minute of time.

 

Wasted time annoyance might be cumulative, such that in the first minute he experiences 1 unit of annoyance, then 1.5 in the second minute, 2 in the third, and so on until the end. Maybe the progression isn't linear, but you get the idea. Under that model, the newcomers would only derive 1 unit of annoyance for that first wasted minute. This tips the scale back towards the first leaver.

 

10 minutes of annoyance = (1 + 1.5 + 2 + 2.5 ... + 5.5) units of annoyance = 32.5 units of annoyance

10 players * 1 minute of annoyance = 10 units of annoyance

 

At least from the perspective of 1 Leaver vs. 10 Newcomers, the balance is probably on the side of the leaver.

 

We can still make it trickier by taking into account the players that did NOT choose to leave. And the question remains, how much disutility do we cause them by leaving? It turns out that answer is a tough one. Some of them might just say "good riddance" with you gone, generating no additional disutility. Others might be genuinely annoyed at leavers for moral reasons, which would add some unhappiness to the balance. Still others might be frustrated, but no more frustrated than if you had stayed and played to a blowout loss. I suspect that the annoyance that they feel at losing isn't much less or more than the annoyance they feel by an early leaver, but it's up for argument. (Of course,there is also the enemy team to consider, but there is something nonsensical about considering their utility; we are going to just leave it out).

 

So adding additional players into the equation complicates the matter (but it's still an interesting line of inquiry). We are still left with no clear cut answer.

 

I agree that it is a very interesting topic that is worth discussing. My suspicion is that there MIGHT BE some ethical answer that gives a very reasonable argument as to why we shouldn't leave WZs. And we might be able to find it! At least from a strict utility calculus, however, it is a very tricky problem that probably doesn't produce a compelling argument to stay in losing pug WZs.

To be fair to everyone, one minute of one person's wasted time is never over 3x more than one minute of another person's wasted time. No one is 3 times more important than another person. Also keep in record that the 10 people may waste more than 1 minute each (each was in queue for 5 minutes, 25 seconds to load the warzone, 5 seconds to analyze the situation, then 30 seconds to load back to whatever planet they were on and queue up again... that's a total of 60 minutes of time wasted!!!!!!). Also to be fair, 100% the wasted time morally belongs to the original person, since rest don't have control of full match.

Oh well, their quit warzone button is located in the same place as mine, I'm pretty sure.

Then the next person's time after them is wasted, and so on until match ends. Magnified by each following person's waiting in queue plus loading (both entering and exiting) time. You are not more important than any other player. It is disgusting to be selfish.

Not gonna lie, I've quitted my fair number of times. I never "feel good" doing it. It's usually out of frustration, and takes a boiling point for me to do that, which can happen following a losing streak or seeing extremely poor/dumb play.

An example is at the beginning of Civil War, I head to mid, only to realize EVERYONE else goes to cap snow. So of course, I get dropped in 2 seconds in mid so we lose both mid and grass. I immediately leave.

I have never quit a WZ in the year and a bit that i've been playing this game. It's come to a point where now I can never ever let myself leave just so I can continue saying I've never bailed on a WZ once.

I'm not gonna lie, I've been at a point where 6 players were off /dancing and farming defense medals when we had plenty of time to still go for a comeback. I was 1 button click away from leaving but then I had to stop myself.

I never quit...I've also never farmed defense medals... If you need me i'll be 1 v 6-ing mid in Civil War when we're losing at (60 - 340) while everyone else wastes their sub.

Remember this, when you leave early because you don't want to waste your time, remember that every time you do someone who is waiting next in the queue has to waste their time taking your spot. Think about this next time you leave a warzone early.

Quitters are not to blame... Bioware is for not having a matchmaking system.

Which is also why you won't see a quitter debuff. They can't punish customers for their design flaw.

Quitting is basically customers doing their own match-making.

Quitters are not to blame... Bioware is for not having a matchmaking system.

 

Which is also why you won't see a quitter debuff. They can't punish customers for their design flaw.

 

Quitting is basically customers doing their own match-making.

It's called Ranked WZ. Quitters are selfish people who are thinking only of themselves and inconsiderate of others.

haha, keep dreaming, they wouldn't even add a 1 min debuff, and you think your getting a 45 min one?

 

The quitting is a symptom, not the problem, the problem is unbalanced teams, most people don't need to be steam rolling to not quit of of a warzone, just feel that they have a chance in hell to win. Installing a matchmaker is the only solution to reduce quitting.

Well at least one person in this thread gets it.

Sometimes it's a good thing. last night I joined huttball, it was 0:2, 9 min left, 6 minutes later we won 6:2 with 3 solo scores by yours trully, 2 assissts with guy who joined wz 15 seconds after me, and 1 score I don't know how since I died..

if we had quitter debuff, these 2 bads who we replaced would still be in that game.

You know who never has to backfill? 4 man premade teams. Maybe a handful of people have ever had to backfill while in a premade before, while those who solo can sometimes have 5-6 in a row on some nights. 2 days ago I logged on, backfilled 6 straight matches, 3 of which were 3 capped against me and another was losing 5-0 in Huttball. Fun.

Another case of the rich getting richer.

It's called Ranked WZ. Quitters are selfish people who are thinking only of themselves and inconsiderate of others.

False.

The day they allow solo or 4-man queueing for ranked warzone will be the day I agree with this.

There are literally hundreds of ranked caliber PvPers on every server who cannot do ranked PvP because of the 8-man requirement, combined with something resembling a competitive group composition.

I do normals because I have no other practical choice. I even joined a monsterously large guild (previous to this one) in hopes that they could at least put together two ranked teams. Yeah - no such luck.

You know who never has to backfill? 4 man premade teams. Maybe a handful of people have ever had to backfill while in a premade before, while those who solo can sometimes have 5-6 in a row on some nights. 2 days ago I logged on, backfilled 6 straight matches, 3 of which were 3 capped against me and another was losing 5-0 in Huttball. Fun.

 

Another case of the rich getting richer.

Yeah, but on the other hand, if 3-4 in a group join your warzone, you can be pretty certain, win or lose, they won't quit in the middle. So there is stability that goes with it for the other 4 puggers.

To be fair to everyone, one minute of one person's wasted time is never over 3x more than one minute of another person's wasted time. No one is 3 times more important than another person. Also keep in record that the 10 people may waste more than 1 minute each (each was in queue for 5 minutes, 25 seconds to load the warzone, 5 seconds to analyze the situation, then 30 seconds to load back to whatever planet they were on and queue up again... that's a total of 60 minutes of time wasted!!!!!!). Also to be fair, 100% the wasted time morally belongs to the original person, since rest don't have control of full match.

In your explanation you are just trying to compare wasted time in minutes. That is not a fair analysis, nor a utilitarian one, because wasted time is not valued equally by people. Small wastes of time are mildly annoying. Large wastes of time are extremely annoying. I am comparing the utility and disutility (happiness and unhappiness) that people experience with each unit of wasted time.

So no, no one is more important than anyone else. The total net happiness is what is important. The more time is wasted in the WZ itself, the more extreme unhappiness that first person accrues. Backloggers who join the game, even after waiting 5 minutes, can still immediately leave with only mild unhappiness. This keeps the total net utility higher than if that one person sat around in game fuming. Sure, some of the backloggers might be more than mildly annoyed at wasting 5 minutes to join a game, but to those people I would say "Think of the guy who already left and how much unhappiness he was feeling".

As I said earlier, at the very least, the utility scale is balanced. But it's probably on the side of the leaver just because of how much unhappiness people feel in a losing WZ as compared to the truly mild irritation of just joining an already lost game that can quickly be quit.

A leaver is not just thinking of himself. He is thinking that, by staying, he incurs X units of suffering. The backloggers, however, will only incur <X units of total suffering. Therefore, to keep total happiness maximized, he leaves.

Now, if I had to guess, it seems that you just do not believe in a utilitarian ethical system. That's totally fine. A lot of people don't either (I'm not crazy about it TBH). It is absolutely not the end-all, be-all way to look at the question. I merely offer it to show that the question of WZ-Leaving is ethically ambiguous.

Also to be fair, 100% the wasted time morally belongs to the original person, since rest don't have control of full match.

Untrue. As many people have pointed out, players leave games when other players on their team do stupid stuff. They don't call incs. They fight off nodes. They overextended. They tunnelvision on a healer. They let ball carriers charge them in endzones. They leave their node to get DPS. In each case (especially when you look at the cases collectively), the wasted time really belongs to the people who lost the WZ. The leaver, provided that he genuinely did nothing wrong (which isn't always the case), is not to blame for his teammates' ineptitude.

This alone might give him moral reason to leave.

Yeah. You keep thinking that. And if hell freezes over and they do institute that, don't come to the forums crying about people camping at the node getting defense medals, not contributing to the fight because they can't leave the WZ.

I don't see why people don't see this debuff coming. Swtors taken many of its systems and designs from WoW, no one can deny that. If anyone remembers wow, it was a 30 min debuff for leaving a pvp zone....and that even includes THE YEARS where there were 40 alliance vs 15 horde in alterac valley, and all horde wanted to leave and re-que because it was fruitless. (though eventually it evened back out after the lich king came out)

So at that point, people in a lossing match did just what you described, went next to a tree and stayed there the whole match, and went and watched tv or made a sandwich, if the team won GREAT, you still got rewards too, if not... setiing afk in the battleground was no worse than setting afk in the city because of the debuff.

They stopped that action too, people were then allowed to mark you afk, and basically boot you from the battleground, you had like 30 seconds to respond by getting tagged in combat etc.

People act like this debuff thing has only been talked about in swtor, and its never been implemented anywhere else. Not only has its design been implemented, but has been done so by the king of mmo's. It's just a matter of time before it happens here.

I don't see why people don't see this debuff coming. Swtors taken many of its systems and designs from WoW, no one can deny that. If anyone remembers wow, it was a 30 min debuff for leaving a pvp zone....and that even includes THE YEARS where there were 40 alliance vs 15 horde in alterac valley, and all horde wanted to leave and re-que because it was fruitless. (though eventually it evened back out after the lich king came out)

yes. they do implement a lot of things that wow has. on the other hand, how well did that quitter debuff work in wow? it didn't. ppl quit left and right. 30m? ok. I'll hop on one of my other 10 toons. 30m? great. I'll get some lunch. 30m? ha! I need to gather some mats for XYZ.

meanwhile, swtor will just crash or boot you out of wz with no warning. sorry bud, but a quitter debuff is a proven fail.

Tell EA to allow PUG vs PUG PVP.

Almost all quits are because of gross imbalance.

People pay money to EA for a chance to play a fun game.

EA has failed miserably at their responsibiltiy.

This imbalance is getting worse and not better.

I never used to quit WZs and now even I do.

So fux all the people whining at the players... IT IS EAs dam fault!

This kind of ethical and interpersonal arguments against leaving a warzone is way, way more compelling/interesting than those of the "man up bro" and "take your licks" variety. Arguments in the latter category are just strangely misplaced in regards to SWTOR pug PvP; people that need to prove their ability to "man up" in a video game need to be finding other hobbies. They are also generally irrational.

 

But the moral arguments introduce a new and interesting element to the puzzle: The other human beings in your game. And as you might suspect, there are no simple answers. It all depends on what your own ethical orientations are.

 

Some people might think that your own needs come before those of others, and for them, the conversation would end right there. Others might go the way of Kant (at least in his simplest form) and assume that any behavior we can't universalize is a behavior that we shouldn't engage in.This is also a version of our esteemed "Golden Rule" (Do unto others as you would have done unto you, etc.), a principle that is surely relevant here. We could also pick up a utilitarian calculus to judge this behavior, approving of actions that enable the greatest good with the least harm. Or countless other moral guidelines from countless other moral systems.

 

Without getting into a really gratuitous argument about what ethical system is best, we can't really make a good judgment about leaving a WZ, even if the idea is very interesting.

 

But what I will say is this (even if it's a bit utilitarian without paying enough respect to other theories): The person who fills in for you is probably being harmed less than the person who sticks around. The guy who backlogs for you? He shrugs, maybe cusses "**** a losing WZ!", and then just leaves the game; because he joined the game late anyway, he feels no agency in its loss and no investment in its outcome. So he will just requeue having wasted very little time and experiencing very little frustration. Or maybe he loves the uphill fight so he stays around to play it out! In that case, you did him a favor.

 

For you, however, by remaining in the WZ and wasting your own time on a thoroughly unenjoyable activity, you incur a big hit to your own happiness. Your own loss of happiness, not to mention 10 minutes of your time, is comparatively much larger than the minor frustration and wasted 60 seconds experienced by the backlogger.

 

It's not the ONLY way to view the ethical problem, but it is definitely one way to do so.

Philosophy review while browsing the SWTOR forums.

You are wonderful, sir.